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All this, however, we may leave to individual judgement: to
proceed:
This produced reality is an Ideal form- for certainly nothing
springing from the Supreme can be less- and it is not a
particular form but the form of all, beside which there is no
other; it follows that The First must be without form, and, if
without form, then it is no Being; Being must have some
definition and therefore be limited; but the First cannot be
thought of as having definition and limit, for thus it would be
not the Source but the particular item indicated by the
definition assigned to it. If all things belong to the produced,
which of them can be thought of as the Supreme? Not included
among them, this can be described only as transcending them: but
they are Being and the Beings; it therefore transcends Being.
Note that the phrase transcending Being assigns no character,
makes no assertion, allots no name, carries only the denial of
particular being; and in this there is no attempt to circumscribe
it: to seek to throw a line about that illimitable Nature would
be folly, and anyone thinking to do so cuts himself off from any
slightest and most momentary approach to its least vestige.
As one wishing to contemplate the Intellectual Nature will lay
aside all the representations of sense and so may see what
transcends the sense-realm, in the same way one wishing to
contemplate what transcends the Intellectual attains by putting
away all that is of the intellect, taught by the intellect, no
doubt, that the Transcendent exists but never seeking to define
it.
Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is
not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a
true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only
to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, The
One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality:
under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication
in the symbol "Apollo" [a= not; pollon= of many] with its
repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of
The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence:
the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for
more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be
followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best
that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature
indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any
sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by
vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of
even that.
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